Painted Swan Headquarters, Northgate
One week before the Autumn’s Turn Festival
The farmers of these frost-touched lands knew well the pale wheat that sprouted from the hard packed snow in the late of winter and the small hard sanguine buds with a bitter flavor that could be found in clusters on the trees that kept their leaves in the late of the year. There were gray tubers which could be dug from beneath the permafrost and small purple berries with obnoxious large pits. There was a variety of fruit and grain, perhaps more than one might suspect, which grew in the cold and harsh lands of the North, but among them was not the round crisp fruit with white flesh and a sweet flavor known to be the common apple.
The Grand Inquisitor drew the thin blade of a small knife through the red-skinned fruit and the sound was neither a tear or a snap, but something uniquely delightful. The late afternoon light that came through the window, where she sat against the edge of the broad oak table covered in a scattering of map-sketches of the surrounding region and the city of Northgate, revealed such exquisite detail in the pattern on the fruits skin, the glistening moisture on its exposed flesh, and the small black seeds which revealed themselves within.
There was a slow turn of the knife and she began to separate a slice of the apple from the rest, when her motions became still and the muscles beneath her eyes tightened in a way subtle. She had almost stopped listening to the droning report of the young Lieutenant Elmsing who stood behind her on the far side of the table — almost. “The officer who abandoned his post — read that again,” she said.
Elmsing paused and his eyebrows knitted in a moment of hesitation, before turning back to the previous page of loose papers gathered in his hands and murmuring to himself, “…uhm, re-allocation of the first battalion, second division to the northern excavation site…
…re-deployment of the sixth light-armor cavalry to the southern expanse,” the man said, his words adrift before finding clarity. “Lieutenant-Officer Hallas Peters. Charged with dereliction of duty and absence without leave…” the man’s voice began to drift as his eyes quickly scanned the lines of the page, before he continued. “The only following record of his whereabouts is that he was seen by the man-at-watch at Tops some days later and has not reported for duty since — men have already been sent to his registered residence in Sonvir to detain his family, Grand Inquisitor.”
Her eyes moved in the way one might if watching a thing small and quick, perhaps a humming bird at the mouth of a flower, but stared at nothing much at all. The cant of her head was small and subtle as might that of a curious animal.
“Peters abandoned his post and some days later decided to have a meal at the officer’s club, before vanishing forever and knowing well the cost of desertion — what else there?” she asked aloud.
Lieutenant Elmsing parted his lips to speak, but hesitated, shuffling to the next page of the papers and shaking his head uncertainly. “There isn’t much — the man-at-watch reported that Peters did not stay long that he remembered, simply that he had a meal with… the Field Marshal,” he said with a small edge of surprise to his voice.
The raise of her eyebrow was small and the slight movement at the corner of her lips similarly so. “I see…” she said with the slightest intrigued amusement, before lifting the slice of apple to her mouth and bisecting it with a clean press of her teeth. She murmured easily while chewing, “Anything else?”
Elmsing fumbled through a few more pages. “Nothing significant. There have been unfortunate, but small loses to wild beasts in the north-lands, there was an apartment fire in slums, but the only registered casualty was…” Elmsing trailed off with a small frown. “Oh.”
“What’s that, Lieutenant?”
Elmsing cleared his throat, “Ah, nothing important Grand Inquisitor. The casualty was a baker I knew — good sweet rolls and soufflé.”
“My condolences,” the Grand Inquisitor said flatly, before gesturing vaguely toward the man, who turned on his heel and began from the room. She ran the tip of her tongue along the back of her teeth, before sliding a glance toward another man who stood quiet at the edge of the table away from the slanted and amber light that came in through the window where the setting sun was near the mountains. She perked an eyebrow at him.
Inquisitor Gayle’s age was betrayed by a salting of his short beard and mustache and the tousling of his hair where it was beginning to draw back at the temples. The scar that ran across the bridge of his nose began just beneath his eye, the jagged line a bit lighter than the surrounding flesh. “The scribes have finished transcription of the Tutonson Journal,” he said.
“Good — take the original to Galoring,” she said shortly, before setting the cut apple down on the wooden slat and piercing the top of it with the small knife cleaning a bit of lingering juice from the edge of her thumb with pursing of her lips.
Inquisitor Gayle nodded his head. “I’ll have a courier enroute to Galoring at dawn’s light, Grand Inquisitor,” the man said before he began to turn and head toward the door.
“Excuse me. What?” she asked with a squint.
Gayle hesitated in his steps and turned back toward the Grand Inquisitor with a “…the Tutonson journal. You said —” he began, before being interrupted.
“Yes, I told you to take the journal to Galoring, and it sounded like you told me you were going to hand the Tutonson Journal to a fucking courier and give him a few pieces of gold to deliver something of indescribable importance across the entire barony,” she said as she stared toward him with an expression impenetrable.
“Ah…” Gayle hesitated, “Your Eminence, I merely presumed my presence would be necessary here, as Galoring is at best course more than a year —”
“I am well fucking aware how far it is,” she said with a gentle smile that managed somehow to reach all the way to her eyes. “You will travel to Galoring and you will place that book in the hands of your Lord Tyr Isendel yourself and you will take a dozen seasoned soldiers with you.”
Inquisitor Gayle did not quite blink, but it was something close enough, before he nodded his head with a slight clearing of his throat. “Grand Inquisitor,” he said with a moment of lingering, before he turned and headed from the room.
The Grand Inquisitor watched him go and her eyes lingered on the door for a moment after it closed, before she took hold of the back of a wooden chair and began to drag it across the floor to the far side of the table. She turned the chair around and sat into it with her knees open on either side of it, before folding her arms across the back. The smile on her face was fatigued, but genuine toward the young man, Private Seldon, who sat still and uncertain in his own chair directly in front of her with the stain of a bruise still fresh beneath his eye.
“I apologize so entirely for that interruption. Please, continue — I believe you were telling me a very interesting story about a pretty young girl you met recently,” she said with an expression of rapt fascination.
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S12 E01: The Autumn Festival